Friday, June 27, 2014

This week I need to cover two weeks because I was traveling
last week.EID did not miss a beat
because of the fantastic management of Keith Bujak.But I wasn’t around to write up
the recap here.

So here is what came out over the past two weeks:

Nature Nurture in Gender: The constant interaction between
nature and nurture really fascinates me.The genes are there, but then how to they get expressed?And how does the expression change the wiring
in the brain?And how do genetic
dispositions influence the way the changes roll out?And on and on. . .

All in One Devices: The only good thing about all-in-one-devices seems to be the blending of letters when trying to come up with a
name.Phablet.Padphone. How about Laphabletch (laptop,
phone, tablet, watch)?

PrecrastinationI see
precrastination all the time, and even do it sometimes.But never knew it had a name.

Crowdsourcing at Marriott: Hotels never seem to be on the
cutting edge of technology, customer experience, or user engagement.Maybe this example shows they can turn a
corner.

Privacy and Ambient Computing: I suspect electronic monitoring will be
controversial and constantly changing for many years.The tradeoff is hard to resolve and each time
a new technology comes out we have to rethink it from scratch.Not exactly what government or law
enforcement is good at.

I was asked to test out the new Schick Hydro 5 Groomer.I think I am a good test case. Not just
because I have consumer product evaluation experience in my HF life, but I also
shave very irregularly.Sometimes I have
one day of growth, and sometimes five. I
also have kind of a bony face that challenges a lot of the razors I use.If the Schick can handle my face and habits,
it has promise.

I also plan to follow up with a blog about whether the fact
that they sent me one for free has an unconscious influence on my review.You wouldn’t think that a couple of bucks
saved on a razor would make a difference, but the unconscious part makes it
more powerful than you might otherwise expect.There is also the endowment effect since now it is “my” razor.If a razor can influence me, it adds evidence
that when politicians assert that lobbying and campaign money doesn’t influence
them is complete BS.They might
legitimately think it doesn’t (sometimes), but there are many studies with
strong evidence that it does anyway.I
want to point my intuition, introspection, and metacognition at the influence
and see what it feels like.I doubt I
will be lobbied anytime soon (except maybe by my students groveling for grades,
but they don’t offer Caribbean speaking engagements), so this might be the
closest I get.